The Ice Maiden
by La Guera
Summary: Sharp tongues can cut the deepest of wounds, but love will always mend them again.


Disclaimer(s): All recognizable people, places, and events in the CSI:NYverse are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

**A/N:** Yet more crack. Written just after COTP. Spoilers for S1 and S2.

He couldn't remember the last time she had touched him. In the hospital, he supposed, in the long twilight hours he'd spent hovering between sleep and darker waters by far. If he concentrated, he could recall her cold fingers entwined in his limp ones, or her lips against his, light as mist. Words came, too, fragments to be snatched from beneath the hiss and gargle of the rehab center shower. _Please. Need… Love…_

_That ain't quite true, _observed Gavin Moran as he scrubbed Head and Shoulders into his scalp. _She touched you after that. In fact, touchin' you is all she wanted to do when you returned to the land of the livin'. She stroked your arms and cupped your face in her tremblin' hands and planted kisses wherever she could reach. She was starved for the feel of your skin, desperate for it, like she was afraid you'd slip away again if she let you go._

_She talked, too. Words upon words in an endless succession, trippin' over themselves in the effort to be heard. Sometimes, she talked about what had happened at home while you were driftin' on your lake of dreams, or the news. Sometimes, it was her students and lectures she discussed, and sometimes it was just a chain of words meant to tether you to consciousness in the midst of the heavy doses of morphine. But she never stopped talking. She talked even in her sleep, slurring nonsense syllables while her head pillowed on the stiff, sterile sheets of your hospital bed. It was almost musical, the way she hummed while her eyelids fluttered._

_And then you came home, and the silence fell._

He massaged in the shampoo with a vicious rake of his nails. He hadn't meant to still her voice so completely. It was the hovering that had pushed him over the edge. After three weeks in the hospital, where his every move and breath was monitored and analyzed by three pairs of clinical, dispassionate eyes, he had wanted nothing more than his privacy and a chance to breathe without the perversely cheerful beep of the cardiac monitor to keep time. He'd wanted to curl in on himself and sleep in his own bed without prying eyes and prodding fingers jolting him awake. If he could only sleep, then the world would make sense again.

But Rebecca had followed him everywhere. She'd trailed after him as he walked from room to room, ghosted after him in waif-eyed silence, and wherever he sat, she sat beside him, arm to arm. He tried to tell himself that she was simply reassuring herself that he was still alive, but with every jostle and every twinge and throb from his still-healing stomach whenever she jostled him in an attempt to get closer, his irritation grew. In the end, just before the tether snapped, his need for solitude had been almost pathological, matched in rapaciousness only by the hot, serrated claws that sank into his side if he moved too quickly.

_You were taking a nap when it happened. Tryin' to, anyway. You were sprawled on the pillows with the linen sheet pulled over your hips, drowsy and sore from your therapy session. You had just started to drift when you heard the whetstone hiss of palms on metal wheel, and then she was on the periphery of your vision._

Hey, babe, _she said, and pulled alongside the bed. _You okay?

Yeah, yeah, I'm good. Just tired. I'm gonna get some sleep, doll. When I wake up, we can catch some dinner if you want.

Okay. You want some company?

_She started to crawl onto the bed, then, and she rested her hand just above your hip. She should have known better, but your wound was new and her habit was old. For a moment, all the world was pain, a bright, white corona of unspeakable agony. You couldn't even scream. All you could do was writhe in the bedsheets and mouth soundlessly while you scrabbled for her hand._

_Then it was gone, and she was stammering tearful apologies. You drew a breath, and a hot knife plunged into your guts. Tears blurred your vision, and it was five minutes before the infected-boil throbbing subsided enough to sit up._

Oh, God, baby, I'm so sorry, _she managed between gulping hitches of her chest. _I'm so sorry. I didn't mean- I just wanted-," _She reached for your face_.

_You batted her solicitous hands away, and if you had left it at that, the gulf that exists between you now wouldn't be so large. Hell, it might not be there at all, but you, kid, you ain't never done anything half-assed, so you went after her with both barrels and one in reserve._

'_Course he did, _grunted his father. _Whaddaya expect from a kid who blasted his baby sister into a sniveling wreck 'cause he missed a chance to get his rocks off. If he had no restraint with his flesh and blood, what makes you think he'd show any with the woman he promised to love, honor and cherish?_

Gavin pointedly ignored his father's gibe, and not for the first time since their estrangement more than a year ago, his longing for his old partner was an aching cramp in his chest, stifling and suffocating as pleurisy. Gavin had a knack for cutting through the bullshit and reducing a problem to its most basic nuts and bolts. Sure, he hurt and suffered like everyone else, but he knew how to work through the pain and staunch the wound until he could get back on his feet. He didn't waste time tilting at windmills and arguing with the ghosts that haunted the deepest recesses of his mind.

Gavin resumed his interrupted narrative. Don't touch me, _you snarled, and your voice was rough with pain and startled anger. _Just get away from me. Get outta here, dammit. Leave me alone, for fuck's sake. You haven't let me breathe since I got out of the hospital, for Christ's sake; you've been wearin' grooves in the floor with alla your followin' me around. If I'd wanted a damn nurse, I'd've requisitioned one from Trinity. Get off my back and go entertain yourself for a while. You've done enough damage.

_That stopped you cold because it was too close to what your father said to you after your sister died. _You've done enough, boy. _You opened your mouth to take it back, but the blow had already been struck, and there were no soothing words to draw the poison out. She backed away from you, chest heaving and eyes wet with tears, but even in the grip of a lethal wound, she was proud, and she did not sob. She gritted her teeth and whirled away and into the living room. You knew you should follow, but you were so tired, and the thought of walking inspired a dull nausea, so you retreated to the bed and told yourself that you'd make amends when you woke up._

_But later was too late. By the time you ambled into the living room four hours later, she had drawn the dampers down. She was on the couch, grading papers when you made your grand entrance in your socked feet, rumpled boxers, and Yankees t-shirt, and she barely registered your presence with a flick of her eyes. You willed her to look at you, but her gaze remained locked on the stack of papers on her lap._

_You apologized, but even the sound of your voice couldn't persuade her to acknowledge you._

It's fine, _she said in a flat, remote voice, and her red pen continued to scratch indictment across the pages._

_The next day, you brought her sunflowers in the hopes that their bright, bobbing heads would dispel the shadows that had fallen over her face, but she merely spared them a cursory glance before setting them on the kitchen counter and abandoning them. They were still there when you got ready for bed that night, and you cut them and put them in a vase, but they withered and died within days, merry, whimsical heads drooping in mournful acquiescence._

_It's been nine weeks since you detonated a hand grenade inside your marriage, and you've been trying to pick up the pieces ever since. You've invited her to dinner and offered to take her on a ride in a hansom cab through Central Park, let her curl against you and lose herself in the rhythm of the wheels and the lazy clip-clop of the horse's hooves. But she has brushed them all aside with a disinterested blink of her eyes and a dismissive wave of her hand. Your private ray of sunshine has become trapped in a jagged shard of ice, and no amount of chiseling will set her free._

_My ice queen, _he thought sadly. _That's what she is now. Hans Christian Andersen came in the night and spirited my sun-child away, replaced her with this creature of marble and ice and painted-on eyes. She's hard to the touch, and cold. She doesn't melt into my fingers anymore, and when I kiss her, she tastes like ice, blood and metal shavings. _

He blinked the water from his eyes and watched the suds from his hair drip down the inside of his leg and crawl into the drain. He caught sight of the scar tissue that began just to the right of his navel, and his lip curled in disgust. The surgeon had sewed as finely as he could, showing his appreciation for the city's finest by the skill of his nimble fingers, but it was still massive, an ugly, pocked wattle of skin that stretched from just below his ribs to just above and behind his right hip. It reminded him of a malicious, leering mouth, and more than once over the course of his recovery and rehabilitation, he had been tempted to dig the hard, white crescents of his nails into it, convinced that if he could peel it from his body, he could close the gaping wound that festered in his living room and bedroom beneath the stoic silence of throttled conversations and the monotonous hum of the TV.

Not that he would ever admit to such a foolish hope. Especially not to the snooty headshrinker the department required him to see three times a week. She had high, sharp cheekbones and wore tailored Armani suits and smelled of expensive perfume, and every time she looked at him, he knew he was nothing but a case file for her records. She hmmed in all the right places and scribbled notes on her yellow legal pad, but she did not see him. She saw his wounds and his service record and the potential for a shooting spree.

She sat behind her desk, and he sat on the couch that farted when he moved. She asked him about his sleeping patterns and his dreams and his daily routine, and beneath the barrage of questions, thirty was thirteen. He chafed under her sense of smug entitlement and flushed at the nape and behind the ears.

_Like a kid getting caught with jizz in his underpants, _he thought resentfully as he soaped his underarms.

_Last week was no better on that score, _Gavin said. _That's when she started askin' about your sex life, wantin' to know if "you and your wife had resumed normal sexual relations since the incident." Prissy bitch, sittin' there with her legs crossed and wearin' that sanctimonious, shit-eatin' grin that says she can withhold your badge if you don't wanna sing the right song._

He snorted. As far as he was concerned, she could go fuck herself. What happened between the closed doors of his marriage bed was nobody's business, and it had fuck-all to do with his ability to be a cop. He could still hold a gun and cuff a perp whether he was getting laid or not, and he sure as hell wasn't going to hold Rebecca up for their avid inspection and twisted amusement in the name of mental fitness for duty.

_Sure, you ain't, _his father grunted. _And your reluctance to talk has nothin' to do with the fact that there's nothin' to talk about. She hasn't touched you since you shouted her out of the room, and she hasn't come to your bed since three weeks before that, when you wound up on the operating table and she got a visit from a police escort. She doesn't refuse your touch, doesn't shake off your hand or turn her head from your kisses, but she doesn't return them, either. When you hold her hand, her fingers don't curl protectively around yours, cool and possessive as nightshade ivy. They're as limp and unresponsive as a shucked mollusk, and she extricates them as quickly as she can. You're left on the couch with an empty space in your palm and in your heart, blinkin' stupidly in the dim, gray light and wonderin' where the hell she went._

_You've tried to bridge the gap between you with kisses and caresses and urgent entreaties in the dark, with the means of communication that has never failed, but her heart has gone deaf and dumb. The constant, flickerin' flame of desire and need that once drove her to take you into her mouth in the front seat of a department car with a pair of uniforms thirty feet away has guttered and died, snuffed like a wet match. She lies on her side of the bed, knees drawn up and arms dangling bonelessly over the edge, and you lie on yours with the sheets puddled over your achin' cock, tryin' to pretend that the distance between the two sides isn't a thousand miles and growin' by the hour._

His fingers grazed the knurled pocks of scarring left by bits of masonry as they embedded themselves in his skin. They no longer hurt; in fact, he wasn't sure he could feel them at all. It was like reaching out and finding someone else's skin. He suspected that somewhere in the city, a complete stranger was feeling the furtive brush of his soapy fingers.

The larger scar again, red and wattled and mocking, a vivid symbol of the carnage left in Lessing's wake, of his marriage hemorrhaging its sacred magic between his clutching fingers.

_She was so pretty the day you married her, comin' shyly down the aisle on Gavin's arm. She had a bitch of a time findin' a gown that wasn't all long tranes and belled waists that would get caught in her spokes if she moved. They had a few gowns that were supposedly designed for the "differently-abled bride", but they were unflattering bits of cloth cut with no regard for feminine shape, meant only to hide the wheels that supported her. She had taken one look and derided them as pity albatrosses. Said that when she wore one, she looked like the foam on a root beer float. You laughed so hard your nose got all plugged with snot, but it wasn't so funny later, when she was comin' out of yet another bridal shop on the verge of tears because she couldn't find a dress. You got so desperate to make it all right for her that you were considering takin' out a loan to have a tailor design a gown for her._

_It was Stella and Aiden to the rescue. They took her to Saks', and Stella went to work. She and Rebecca scoured the store for cocktail gowns and evening gowns and even debutante gowns. They pored over cuts and styles and narrowed the field, and they bulled over the fish-lipped salesgirls who looked down their plastic noses and told Rebecca that perhaps she would prefer something less revealing. When she'd found the dress she wanted, Aiden and Stella helped her wrangle into it, holding her up and supporting her while she smoothed and straightened and preened._

_They took her to fittings and helped her design the veil and beading, helped her pick out the lacework for her bodice. They helped her with pantyhose and shoes, and Stella told you long after the wedding that she'd never seen anyone so dazed and overwhelmed by the process, as if Rebecca never thought she could be so absolutely girly._

_You sipped your coffee and gave a vague grunt of acknowledgement, but that was all. Much as you cared for Stella, you loved Rebecca more, and you couldn't bring yourself to admit that Rebecca _hadn't _thought she could be so girly. Her life had been one of hospital gowns and accessible clothing with Velcro snaps. Lace and beading and pretty bridal veils were the stuff of wistful fantasy when your biggest concern is finding an accessible toilet and being able to wipe your own ass._

_But they made her beautiful that day. They braided her hair and wove baby's breath through the plaits, and when you raised her veil to kiss her, you saw that one of them-Aiden, most likely-had helped her with mascara and eye shadow. She was a fine-boned china doll, imperfections hidden beneath delicate lace and soft silk, and when you took her to bed, you discovered that they had gone so far as to paint her tiny, curling toes. You wondered how long it had taken them to get it right._

_You never got a chance to thank them properly; you meant to, but soon after the revelation of her painted, wiggling toes, your unsteady, wine-blurred hands were concernin' themselves with the dainty pair of La Perla underwear that Rebecca was wearin' underneath her dress. After that, there were thank-you notes to write, eight fondue sets to return, and bank accounts to make joint. Not to mention health insurance forms and pension beneficiary forms to fill out. Between alla that and the heady rush of honeymoon sex every night, there wasn't time._

_But you never forgot what they did for her, or the way she glowed when you spun her around the dance floor at the reception. It was the first thought to cross your mind when the news came down that the body in the burnt-out car was Aiden's. It pissed you off that someone with the decency to give a moment so precious to someone else was a pile of ash and bone in a casket, while a soulless cocksucker like DJ Pratt kept breathin'. Part of you still hopes one of the vicious pricks at Sing Sing gets to Pratt before the needle does._

It was her feet he thought of now. They were small and cold, and because of poor circulation, they were often a deep, bruised plum. He could hold them in his palm, and if he closed his fingers around them, he could feel the bones shift, feel the absolute flatness of her fallen arches. Eggshell feet, the doctor called them, because lack of weight-bearing had made them weak and brittle.

That fragility was what she had entrusted him with on their wedding day, when she had knelt beside him at the altar on knees never intended to bend that way and whispered into his burning ear that he was her Prince Charming. She had trusted him to love, honor, and protect her, to shield her from the heavy blows.

_You did all right on the first two, _his father pointed out. _But ya fell down on the third count, and you fell hard. The blows have been comin' hard and fast this year, with no thought to what they were crushin'. These past three months have probably been a fuckin' nightmare for her just as much as you. She got to get the visit every officer's wife dreads, and she got to sit in a place that once held her prisoner and watch her husband get his guts sewn back together. Only she doesn't get the benefit of department shrinks to help her sort through the smoldering debris or the pats on the back and well-intended reassurances that everything was gonna be okay. She got a damaged husband who goes to sleep every night fighting the creeping certainty that there's a bomb under the bed, and who's been workin' so hard at getting back on the job that nearly killed him that he never bothered to ask if she needed him._

It occurred to him as he stood beneath a spray of hot water that was rapidly spiraling to lukewarm that he had no idea what Rebecca's life had been like for the eight days of his coma. Oh, he knew that she had held a constant vigil by his bedside, sleeping with her head on his bed and eating only when Hawkes or Stella dragged her to the cafeteria for a few bites of bland food, but he didn't know what she had done or thought in the long hours when there was nothing to do but wait and watch his heartbeat on the panel above his bed.

He had always meant to ask her when he came to himself again, but for the first three days afterward, the dosage of morphine had been so high that he could only slur ineffectually at her and clutch drunkenly at her hand. After the dosage had been adjusted, he'd been ready to talk, but so had the therapists and doctors, and they had hauled him off for scans and tests and therapy sessions. By the time they'd finished with him, he was exhausted and could only slump against his pillows and sleep.

After the first week, his friends had begun to trickle in, bringing with them relieved smiles and inane chatter and ugly mylar balloons that hovered above his head like alien spacecraft. It was the lab nerds and fellow cops, and Rebecca was often unintentionally shunted to the side in their eagerness to see him. After a week, she had given up altogether, and whenever visitors came, she would leave the room and trundle aimlessly through the hallway until they left. He had told himself that there would be all the time in the world to talk while he was on leave, but then the hours had been consumed by his grueling therapy sessions. And then a momentarily misplaced hand had brought the silence down like a wall.

_Who was makin' her tea for her while I was gone? Who made sure she didn't fall and break her neck climbin' in and out of the shower? Who checked her feet for pressure sores, and who rubbed her back and legs when the stress cramps came? Who set up the heatin' pad when her menstrual cramps got bad?_

Suddenly, he was furious. Lessing had no right to fuck up his life like this, to tear away everything that mattered to him in a flashfire of sanctimonious insanity. Until that Sunday morning when the sky had fallen, life had been going his way for once. He had his shield and his brilliant, lovely china doll, and if things had held out, maybe they would have tried for a family. Now, his shield hinged on the whims of some uppity, academic pinhead who wanted to know if he was sticking it to his wife, and his china doll was a remote as the sea.

_You know what the real bitch of it is, kid? _Gavin asked. _It's that the son of a bitch killed six people and shredded your life along with your guts, and he probably ain't gonna get the needle. Some dickwad with a degree upstate will declare him unfit to stand trial, and he'll spend the rest of his life in Bellevue._

"Fuck!" he snarled, and slammed his fist into the wet, tile wall.

Pain exploded in his knuckles, and he drew back and punched the wall again, spitting water and blinking it from his eyes. "Fuck!" Again. "Fuck!" Again.

The third time, his knuckles split with a sizzling flare of heat and left a smear of blood on the tile. He stared at it in logy stupefaction and lowered his hand. Blood trickled from his wounded knuckles, beaded on his fingertips, and dripped into the water with a dreamy _plip._

_Just like Rebecca's painted toenails, _he thought as he stared at the red smear. It was running now, kissed by the water and turning pink as it sluiced through the grout toward the drain.

He got out of the shower and padded to his clothes, which were in an untidy pile in the corner of the room. He dressed without looking in the mirror, tucked his throbbing hand behind his hip so the receptionist wouldn't see it, and left the hospital.

He was down the front stairs and turning toward home when a voice stopped him. "Don."

He turned and saw Rebecca sitting beside the handrailing, hands folded and twisting restlessly in her lap. She was still in a skirt and blouse, which meant she'd come here straight from NYU. She offered him a shy smile and shifted in her chair.

"Hey, doll," he said, surprised, and loped to her. "What're you doin' here? I thought you had class until six?"

"I have lectures until four-thirty and office hours until six." She shrugged. "I got tired of sitting in my office and staring at the walls, so I thought I'd come by. I hope you don't mind."

"Mind? Naw, naw," he said hastily, and ran his fingers through his hair. His heart was thumping wildly inside his chest.

_She still cares enough to come down here,_ he thought dizzily. _Maybe we ain't dead yet._

_If she offers you a chance, you better grab it with both hands, _Gavin advised, '_cause there might not be another one._

"So, everything okay with you?" he asked, and shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot.

"Mmm? Yeah. It's just-," She shrugged again. "I just wanted to see you. I thought maybe we could talk."

He stiffened. Talk. It was all anybody wanted from him anymore. The shrinks sank their claws into him and demanded he talk to the ticking of their clocks, and the doctors talked about progress and outcomes until he wanted to puke. He was buried by words, smothered by them, and they were sour on his tongue.

Something must have shown on his face, because Rebecca murmured, "Never mind. We don't have to talk. We can just walk if you want."

He sighed. "Naw, doll, 's'okay. Just seems like talkin' is all I been doin' lately, you know?"

She relaxed. "Well, can I at least-," She spread her arms. "I don't want to hurt you any more."

_My wife should never have to ask me that,_ he thought, and there was a lump in his throat as he crouched in front of her. "You don't need to ask me that. Ever." He fought to keep his voice even.

She hesitated for the briefest instant, and then her arms were snaking around him. Her hand cupped the back of his head, and he let out a ragged breath. It was sublime to be touched for its own sake. His skin prickled wherever she touched him, and he could have sworn his pores expanded, the better to take her texture and scent into himself.

"God, you smell good." It was muffled by the crook of his neck and the fabric of his shirt.

He smothered a bark of laughter. "I never thought I'd be grateful for Irish Spring."

She rubbed his back in slow circles. "I've missed you so bad," she said, and her voice broke. "But I didn't want to hurt you anymore."

He slowly drew away from her, but he did not let her go. "What is this 'anymore'?" He stroked her chin with his thumb and forefinger.

And then he remembered. _Why don't you go entertain yourself for a while? You've done enough damage._

'_Course that's what she remembers, _his father interjected. _It's what your sister remembered for the last year of her life, and it burrowed in so deep that she took a short trip down the stairs to escape it. How long before it wears her down to nothin' but sorrow and blame and you come home to find she's eaten your Glock?_

"Oh, honey," he managed. "Listen to me. Please." He cupped her face in his hands. She was delicate as porcelain beneath the skin, and he knew he could shatter her with the merest press of his thumbs against her cheeks. "That was-that wasn't your fault. That was me bein' an asshole."

The hand cupping his head massaged his scalp, and the gentleness of the touch made his vision blur. It stood in stark contrast to the demanding, rough hands of the therapists who demanded he work through the pain and ignore the insistent twinges of scar tissue as he did crunches and sit-ups and muscle-toning exercises on the sticky, blue floor mat. It was soothing and sweet and reminded him of lazy mornings returning to consciousness to the touch of her cool hand in the sparse hairs of his chest or the smooth skin of his back, and of a time when life had not been measured in degrees of pain.

She was breathing softly into the curve of his neck, and her breath tickled the sensitive skin of his throat. It was a simple act of intimacy, and he closed his eyes and submerged himself in it. The noise and bustle of the city surrounded them-the crunch of grit underfoot as pedestrians threaded through the clogged, asphalt arteries, the squeal of locking brakes as taxis competed for a fare, the lowing rumble of passing trucks, the bright, wheedling voices of street hustlers-but in the skinny circle of her arms, it was absolutely still. He could breathe and not taste ash and medical tubing.

_Just let me stay like this, _he asked a God with whom he passed a wary acquaintance. _Just let me have this moment forever._

Then Rebecca's lips nuzzled the hollow of his throat, warm and moist, and he felt the subtle, fleeting pressure all the way down to his balls, a simmering ache that made his mouth go dry. Colors intensified to painful brilliance, and his ears filled with the rush of blood.

"Oh, Jesus," he said, and was surprised at the roughness of his voice.

A throaty chuckle against his Adam's apple.

"You, uh, you wanna have dinner with me?" he managed, swaying in his crouch. "Salvatore's? It's only a couple of blocks."

Salvatore's was little more than the cramped kitchen and living room of Salvatore Sciarpetti's home, a tiny wooden house improbably nestled between a pair of hulking, Victorian brownstones. Sciarpetti and his two sons ran the restaurant to make ends meet, and though business was scarce and the menu was limited, it was the best Italian food he had ever had, and he made it a point to take Rebecca there every few months for wine and a little romance. It was easier to talk to her there, away from the sullen eyes and insurmountable expectations of the New York public.

_The badge don't weigh so heavy on your chest there, _Gavin observed. _You don't have to be sure your badge is visible and your gun isn't. You can just sit in the kitchen and hold your girl's hand and not worry about projectin' the public image of a hardass cop. You can steal kisses or cop a furtive feel in the dim light, and there ain't nobody lookin' down their nose at you. You can listen to those old .45s he pulls out and talk over the scratch and pop of old vinyl, and for a couple'a hours, you can pretend you don't wash death outta your pores every day._

It was Gavin who had introduced him to Salvatore's in the first place. It had been on their first beat in the city, and Gavin had dragged him there after shift, goading him up the steps and overriding his protest that he wanted to change out of uniform first. He'd sat at the kitchen table and eaten until his pants hurt, and Salvatore and his wife had bustled in and out, bringing dishes and refilling glasses. Later, he'd gone with Gavin and his wife and twin daughters, the awkward square peg within the circle of family. Gavin never said how he had found the place, but he had always been grateful that he had.

Rebecca drew her lips over his chin and gazed at him through half-lidded, dancing eyes. "I would love to go to dinner with you," she murmured, and her lips were a hairsbreadth from his.

His lips twitched and trembled with the anticipation of lovers' meeting, and his tongue darted out to moisten them. The flicker prompted a sigh from Rebecca, and his pulse quickened. She caressed the corner of his lip with the ball of her thumb, and the thrill of contact spiderwalked over the hard knobs of his spine with glassy fingers and settled languidly in the small of his back.

"Rebecca." Little more than a whisper.

"Detective." Toothpaste and salt and chicken broth, and oh, God, his Rebecca.

She leaned forward, and for a moment, her lips were pressed to his, yielding and sweet as candyglass. Her tongue teased him, but before he could respond, she retreated. He followed her with an animal whine, but she playfully dodged his guiding hand.

"Don't you want to take it slow, babe?" she purred.

No, he didn't. It had been three months since he'd had anything other than a nurse's calculating hand on his prick, and the catheter she had inserted and removed with military precision had hardly smacked of eros. He wanted to slam her against the wall, lift her prim, professional skirt, and sink into her with a prayer of thanksgiving. He wanted to lay her bare and taste her on the blade of his greedy tongue. He wanted to leave the purple blossoms of his fingers in the pale flesh of her thighs, breasts, and hips and carry her musky scent on his sleepy cock while he served his time in the rehab therapy room and counted the hours until his captain returned his badge and gun.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked. His train of thought made enunciation difficult, and he shifted gingerly to draw fabric from the straining head of his cock.

Another tantalizing brush of lip. "You give me dinner and conversation, and I'll give you…everything."

"Everything?" he repeated thickly.

"It's been three months for me, too, you know," she reminded him.

There was nothing for it but to walk to Salvatore's, her fingers twined in his as he pulled her along the rutted, uneven pavement. It was hard to walk with three legs, he found, and his balls were heavy and cumbersome inside his boxers.

_Yeah, but you wouldn't change it for nothin', _Gavin told him matter-of-factly, and Flack could see him in his mind's eye, uniform cap canted forward over his brow and laugh lines etched in the corners of his eyes. _You're still alive to get blue balls, for one thing, and for another, your girl is still beside you and still wants to be, and the ice is thawin'._

There was that, Flack thought as he watched her from the corner of his eye, and later that night after a bellyful of steamed mussels and shrimp scampi and sweet, red wine, he knew Gavin was right. He was kissing Rebecca, and while she still tasted like ice-blood and metal shavings-heat radiated from her. From her wrists, which he pinned above her head, and from her cunt, sucking and wet and desperate as he drove into her.

She was still broken, and so was he. He could feel the fissures and fractures beneath the skin as they moved together, but there was love there, too, bright and brilliant as gold, and maybe with time and patience, it would smooth the roughest edges. If nothing else, perhaps the jagged edges of their individual wounds would fit together in an indivisible whole.

It was the hope he clung to as they writhed together against the front door and the world edged to white and an explosion that threatened to blot out, at least for a few heartbeats, the choking blackness that had swallowed him up. She was keening now, her hips and buttocks slamming spasmodically against the door, her swaying breasts arched in feverish offering.

The hand not circling her wrists lifted her leg and placed it over his hip. Even in his frenzy, he was gentle with this, because her spastic muscles brooked change but grudgingly or not at all. She was babbling and keening and twisting, a language only he had ever heard, and he found it beautiful.

_My ice maiden is melting, _he thought as he drove into her with a muffled cry.

She said his name as though it were holy, spoke it with a tongue of fire, and then she was scoring fire down his back with her nails, body locked and trembling. She was delicate crystal struck by a tuning fork, thrumming endlessly between his steadying fingers.

"I love you," she said, and he heard the ice shatter.


End file.
